personal narratives . poems . prose

Hum

What to do when you’re so heartsick you cannot write. When all your close friends are so very far away. And you were the one who chose to come to this city. So very far away from all of those friends. It’s difficult to form new relationships over and over. “Late” at night, listening to the foreign air conditioning hum. Do you remember how dry it was in Finland? How I had to keep rubbing cream into my lips because they constantly splintered and unfolded into wafts of dried dead skin? I honestly don’t know what the best thing to do is. Stay on with this job, but hate it? Get sucked in, into Houston, into this way of living and laughing and drinking and eating? Escape ASAP and simply drift away without a single thing to do? Wait it out patiently for another year? But the blood in my veins is restless, seeking a new shore, a new city, a new beat, the pump of legs and the whirr of tires beneath me, a slight ocean breeze and the beckoning call. Silence. I seek silence even now. Even from my own thoughts and doubts and lies I call myself at all hours of the day and seek respite from my own bitter tongue swinging like a pendulum between the sides of my skull. There’s one in Paris in the Pantheon and there’s one here at the Museum of Natural Science. I need to go chase my dreams. I need to make it work. I need to trust my feelings. I want to be impulsive. I want to run and run and escape.